PvP Why PvP is not popular in Elite Dangerous?

[GunnerBill]

Op - Because it's an arms race that always ends in Cutter/Prismatics.

It doesn't even seem to matter what weapons you stack on a Cutter either as it does far more damage ramming.

 

[lysan]

the thing is, for better or for worse the primary form of PvP in the game you bought is competitive PvE by design, with optional PvP added on for those who want it. To me, this is a breath of fresh air, with most games having their PvE parts massively cut back and focussing on the direct PvP parts (eg call of duty for instance).

like so many games where i have to either tolerate this, or just not buy (it pained me not buying battlefront - if only they made a dark forces 3 instead)...... In a rare turnabout in ED the shoe is on the other foot. I like competitive PvE but do not like direct PvP and so ED when pitched like this was a good fit. It does mean PvP will probably always feel like a tacked on extra however - unless FD do a bait and switch of course which some would like to see

100% agree, PVP in ED is not a good PVP.

RADAR blip is hollow for players, no mechanics to go incarnito, that is the biggest NOGO for me.

CQC should be in the main game and not a seperate game. So many opportunities here.

 

[DARGAN]

difficult .. if there was no exploration, no trade this game could be done for the PVP but it was not develloper exclusively for that.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

One of my gripes with pvp is that its a fundamentally different ship required for pvp than pve, so I'd need to load out a ship dedicated to one or t'other and do that. Were it the case that I could loadout a ship for PVE and still be able to hold my own against another cmdr, I'd be cool with that, but when I play the game I play against the galaxy ie BGSing somewhere or other, not aiming to tussle with a specific group of players in a very specific set of players in a very special case style of combat engagement. (PvP builds all focus on high alpha damage and are reliant upon shield cell banks for durability, given the ammo limitations in game the PvP ship is set up for one engagement of devastating firepower and enough shields in its banks to keep it alive during that engagement. Where as a PvE combat ship is about managing/mitigating combat attrition by means of energy weapons less reliance on SCB's more on pip management to keep the shield up)

Same for thargoids, the fact we have to use weaponry that is less effective against npc's/cmdrs to deal with thargoids, with their ax weapons and hull tanking...

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

#1 Grind to play. No thanks, engineers.

#2 Attitude with some of the people who like being a for the sake of it.

#3 Gameplay mechanics that make it easy being a

I prefer other games for my MP needs. Be it coop or competitive ones.

 

[verminstar]

Its not the pvp itself that is the problem, its the toxic attitudes and over inflated egos that seem to go with it...lose the childish taunting and the immature insinuations about whomevers mothers and we have a game worth playing...currently we have a cesspool of bad attitude which is, quite frankly, boring as hell and something to be ignored out of hand.

Theres also no role play reason to do pvp...one could make a scenario up but the game doesnt support it. Its just pvp fer the sake of pvp...again...boring and something to be ignored.

And last but not least...the stunning disparity between pvp meta ships and multi purpose that can actually play the rest of the game is too great. To be good at pvp means flying a ship that is literally useless at most everything else...to be good at pve, one has to fly a ship that will be nothing more than a pvp target that moves. The two are simply non compatible and there isnt even the semblance of balance...there is no multi setup that is good at everything and that means its boring and something to be avoided, unless...unless yer into big ego and salt farming in which case, yer gonna love pvp.

I play different games fer my pvp fix...not hard to beat elites version which is just pants truth be told. Half the reason fer why its pants is the game itself hasnt developed the pvp mechanic more than enabling players to shoot each other...the other half of the reason why its boring is the toxic attitudes. Its not fun as it currently stands ergo it is avoided ^

 

[two quiet suns]

Much prefer BF1 for pvp, half hour of flying in a circle doesn't excite me too much. CQC on the other hand is great fun, I wish it was busier!

 

[Poseidal]

Frontier implemented a consequence free balanced PvP addition to the game - however it seems to be rather unpopular....

CQC is nothing like the main game; you don't get to fight in the same ships (and the similar ships don't fly the same) and there are no fixed weapons.

It's also completely separated to the main game so playing and learning it is basically another game, and it wasn't released as a separate full product release to get another player base.

 

[BigBANGtheory [VR]]

There is imho a wide range of reasons:

1. Average age of the player base
2. Heavy promotion of exploration and science themes
3. Need to build competitive ships for PvP and the time investment to do so
4. Lack of reward or incentive for PvP
5. Groups
6. No tracking abilities to hunt down players or ship ID's
7. Bandwidth monitor being used to alert players joining an instance
8. Griefing behaviour/mentality of many (not all) PvP players
9. General drama and hype around PvP in social media and forums
10. Exploitation of game mechanics

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

because in any PVP based games PVP is a arms race. and in ED arms race consists of grinding mats for top engineered modules and money for ships and their replacement. Without a save environment for PvP training it costs loads of rebuy credits to lern proper PvP. Not enough people ever have the time for both of the grinds.

 

[MUSKETEER]

PvP requires grind and money. Even if you like PvP you won't be doing it if you don't grind.
I almost completely switched to cqc now.

 

[CMDR Carbo]

There is a lot of different reason:

1. Engineers
2. Engineers
3. Engineers
...

 

[Aashenfox]

CQC has so much potential its nuts, and what it needs isn't even hard...

Classes (restricted weapons, specific weapons (sidewinder railgun battles, yes!), OPEN (take your own ships)
Team based events (TDM, CTF, CTB, etc)
Player titles for season winners and runners up
IN GAME QUEUING.

Done?

 

[Poseidal]

CQC has so much potential its nuts, and what it needs isn't even hard...

Classes (restricted weapons, specific weapons (sidewinder railgun battles, yes!), OPEN (take your own ships)
Team based events (TDM, CTF, CTB, etc)
Player titles for season winners and runners up
IN GAME QUEUING.

Done?

Also make guns/ships work the same way as in the main game; i.e. not just gimbals on everything.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I honestly doubt so, after all, exploration isn't that popular.

I suspect the main reason is that it is the activity that requiers the largest amount of preparation to do. Get a good ship, get good modules for it, mod most of them and learn how to fly it. In my case it took me about 3 months to unlock all the engineers I needed and get the materials to mod all my modules.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

PvP isn't popular in Elite Dangerous because of the stratospheric skill cap and meta requirements (3.0 should alleviate this a little).

If someone wants to do pvp, they need to read first, about meta, then they need to prepare a ship, then they need to watch some vids to see what techniques are essential, then they need to practice some of that stuff on NPCs to make sure they can actually do it, then at the end of all of that, if you actually care about your performance, you need to learn to FA off, at the very least situationally, ideally for extended periods of battle.

When you've done all that, congrats, you are standing where I am right now, at the very very bottom of the pvp ladder. Now you need to grind a billion credits for rebuys and join a pvp group. Then it's just practice, practice, practice.

It's a very high price of entry and no guarantee that you will be any good at the end. That's why it isn't popular. But that isn't bad for Elite. It's great that it has all different kinds of focused players, some explore, some trade, some pvp combat, some pve combat, some BGS, many combine multiple activities. The fact that the PvP side is difficult to reach for the non-committed is in it's favor if you ask me. Skill and practice should always count.

I guess it depends on the level you want to play but even a random match on a CG will need serious amounts of skill and a suitable ship for the job.

 

[TrollhunterX]

2) Lack of any meaningful Crime & Consequence system, and/or Karma system...

Currently, and since release in December 2014, the consequences for being blown up far outweigh the consequences for the player who perpetrated the blowing up of another player's ship. The game does not care about why a ship was blown up. The punishment is almost always entirely dealt on the player whose ship was blown up - maybe it's an explorer who's been out of the bubble for months and has just lost multiple tens of millions of credits worth of data, plus a ship rebuy? Maybe it's a trader who's just lost all their cargo plus a rebuy?

The 'losing your data' thing reminds me of an old war film where the heroes go behind enemy lines, do whatever needed doing, and come back at the end, wearing German army uniforms, and approaching a British sentry with their hands in the air. The guard rakes them all with his machine gun, and all his CO has to say in recrimination is "Well, don't do it again!" So much for pathos.

But my point is that it really should be a bigger deal when an explorer returns to 'the bubble' with invaluable, perhaps irreplaceable, scientific data, and it's all lost because someone was trigger happy. In reality, someone would implement a system to discourage such actions. Like, a 'black box' in every ship that registered when a scanned ship was carrying a significant amount of data, leading to a humongous fine/bounty if the player then attacked the ship (and maybe a reward for assisting it, if there was a way to do that?), or even the shutting down of the attacker's systems for a few minutes. Few players would enjoy the notion of such a 'nanny box' on their ship, especially if it malfunctioned, but I think that would be the reality for a culture that had achieved common place space travel. No-one can really go it alone when cold vacuum is a metre or so from your face, and it's not so difference from attacking a ship before you've scanned it.

Even if that didn't 'fly', the aforementioned 'black box' could hold all the cartographical data, anyway, and survive the ship's destruction, just like its pilot apparently did.

It just doesn't seem to me that realistic, that data is so perishable.

 

[AbsinthSvK]

Well, and all the new players getting seal-clubbed in Eravate. Not really a good first impression.

it is normal, frustration doing it. Where to find some action ?, find casual players in casual spots. Seal clubbing or blocking entrance is only frustration from lack of devs pvp interest. Nothing wrong with that.

Well, better getting seal-clubbed in Eravate than playing solo for 5 years.

 

[GunnerBill]

The 'losing your data' thing reminds me of an old war film where the heroes go behind enemy lines, do whatever needed doing, and come back at the end, wearing German army uniforms, and approaching a British sentry with their hands in the air. The guard rakes them all with his machine gun, and all his CO has to say in recrimination is "Well, don't do it again!" So much for pathos.

But my point is that it really should be a bigger deal when an explorer returns to 'the bubble' with invaluable, perhaps irreplaceable, scientific data, and it's all lost because someone was trigger happy. In reality, someone would implement a system to discourage such actions. Like, a 'black box' in every ship that registered when a scanned ship was carrying a significant amount of data, leading to a humongous fine/bounty if the player then attacked the ship (and maybe a reward for assisting it, if there was a way to do that?), or even the shutting down of the attacker's systems for a few minutes. Few players would enjoy the notion of such a 'nanny box' on their ship, especially if it malfunctioned, but I think that would be the reality for a culture that had achieved common place space travel. No-one can really go it alone when cold vacuum is a metre or so from your face, and it's not so difference from attacking a ship before you've scanned it.

Even if that didn't 'fly', the aforementioned 'black box' could hold all the cartographical data, anyway, and survive the ship's destruction, just like its pilot apparently did.

It just doesn't seem to me that realistic, that data is so perishable.

This would be good provided the black box remains where the ship was destroyed elseways the less than scrupulous explorer can use data preservation as a quick way to suicide back from a long trip.

 

[sb413197]

I enjoy PVP, but a fair number of PVPers (maybe 25 percent?) are unpleasant, toxic individuals. I would do it more if there were a selective "block comms" for specific players. Or maybe I just need to ignore the comms window!